Mastering the University of Toronto Medical School Essay – Part 5: Putting it All Together

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Disclaimer:
The following article was originally written in 2009 for the University of Toronto medical school admissions essay. Although the advice here is still useful for general medical school essays, since 2012, the University of Toronto medical school changed its admissions process to require the applicant write 4 Brief Personal Essays instead. Don’t fret – I have a written a new step-by-step guide to help applicants with these new 4 Brief Personal Essays.

Over the first four parts of this series, we looked at the overall message we wanted to convey through our essay: that we are proven serious about medicine, that the career makes sense for us, and that the reader will be thoroughly convinced to do whatever it takes to help us become a doctor. We also looked at the three guidelines/questions the University of Toronto admissions committee wants addressed in the essay, and what to consider when approaching them.

So now that you have your overall plan, as well as the main content for your essay (i.e. how you will answer those three guidelines), how do you put it all together?

While there is no “correct” way to write the essay, I think there are some important aspects to address, discuss, and debate. I will give you my thoughts on these aspects, as well as insight into how I approached them, not as necessarily guidelines for what you should do, but rather, guidelines about how to consider thinking about formulating your own approach.

First Person Perspective

I think this should be a pretty obvious one, but there are always a few applicants not sure about which perspective to use when writing their personal essays (i.e. 1st versus 3rd person). My advice is to almost always write in the first person perspective. This is your story, and you can make a much stronger connection with the reader by emphasizing how personal the story through the first person perspective. The immediate reaction isn’t that these experiences happened to some random young man named Josh, for example, but rather, they happened to this very person writing the essay – this makes a big difference.

Essay Structure

Assuming you have compiled all of the experiences and events in your life that you think should be included in the essay, there is always the next question of how to structure those experiences. What order should you put them in?

There are definitely many ways to go about it. Personally, the one I look used was the chronological approach. That is, writing about your important experiences in the order that they occurred. While my essay was not completely written in chronological order, I would say a large chunk of it was. The reason for this was that it allowed me to chronicle my “journey” towards medicine, and nothing makes more sense than chronological order. In a way, I was able to show how each subsequent experience mentioned built upon the previous one, and eventually pointed me towards applying to medical school.

As an example, an early part of my essay talked about my interest in neuroscience, which led to an elementary school project on the brain and nervous system. I would later do a high school science project on an issue involving children. My interest in neuroscience and working with children and youth eventually led me to shadow a pediatric neurosurgeon. I described those experiences in that order, and because of the chronological significance of that order, I didn’t have to do much work transitioning between the ideas.

As you can see, writing in chronological order allows for a good sense of “flow”. The basic idea of flow is for ensuring each main idea in the essay to transitions seamlessly from one to the next. Essays that flow better will be more easily absorbed by the reader. Using the chronological approach as an example, I’m sure you can why it would be much easier to talk about a childhood experience first before describing your transition into university. While the opposite is certainly possible, it is quite clearly more difficult to do.

In short, given the same set of experiences you want to mention, there will obviously be a better way to order them than others. If you are at all stuck at a way to approach the ordering, I highly suggest sticking with the chronological approach until you find something better, or perhaps a combination of both, that works for you.

Essay Style: Like a Story

While this is an essay, remember that it is a personal essay. My personal suggestion is to forget the word essay, and instead, focus on the concept of telling your story. I have written about this concept extensively in my advice on scholarship essays, and the idea remains the same here. Most people who rather read a riveting story than a random, formal essay. Take advantage of this fact.

One way to look at this story is that the ending is the present – that is, your story should be about your journey towards this very moment as you are applying to medical school. How have you gotten to this point, and perhaps, where do you want to go in the future? That’s really all this “essay” is.

Angle

The concept of your essay “angle” is pretty similar to the common idea of having a “theme” for your essay. The angle you choose is essentially going to be the method by which you achieve your overall goal of convincing the reader to help you through to the next round.

The angle I chose to employ was to show that my interests and experiences in life point me not towards just medicine, but specifically something in pediatrics, and quite likely, in neurology. This is a powerful angle because it not just shows that I have seriously thought about medicine and what type of medicine I see myself doing (i.e. a focus), but also it shows that it actually does make sense for me to potentially pursue that specialty.

I am of course by no means saying that you need to know what specialty you want to do, and I am cognizant of the fact that I may very well end up in something completely distant from pediatrics and neurology. People change their minds all the time (and admissions committees of course realize this). That being said, if there is a specialty you do see yourself seriously pursuing and you have experiences that support it, then it is definitely an angle worth considering.

Your experiences, interests, and aspirations will dictate the angle you choose to present to the admissions committee. The important thing is that you have some sort of angle/focus/theme, and that this angle is obvious.

The Introduction: How do I start?

A lot of applicants have writer’s block, particularly with the introduction. They want so badly to have that magical “hook” that absorbs the reader into their story.

If you already have an idea for that that “hook”, then great – go ahead and develop it. But if you don’t, forget it for now. My advice is to write out the main body of your essay, and then come back to your introduction if need be. You can always come up with that amazing introduction later.

I’m guessing it’s fairly obvious that you want your introduction to pull the reader in some way. Like any good story, you want the reader to be interested throughout the entire thing, and of course, creating this interest has to start at the beginning.

The key thing to keep in mind, however, is that the introduction cannot simply be a stand alone – it has to transition to the body of the essay. It doesn’t matter how great your introduction is if it doesn’t make any sense at all with the rest of your essay.

One common hook used in the introduction is some sort of short story, almost in real time and often with dialogue. If you are at all interested in using a real story anywhere in your essay, I suggest you use it in the introduction, mainly because it would stick out too much in any other part of your essay (assuming this story introduction still flows well into the body of your essay).

Personally, the story approach is what I used for my introduction. If you do choose this route, bear in mind that it should literally be a short story. I have seen essays where in order to make the story seem more interesting, the writer spend literally a quarter of the essay telling the story. This is a mistake. Always remember that it is still an introduction, so if you do want to tell a story, make sure it’s something you can tell in a concise fashion. The main role of the introduction is to draw the reader in, but the longer it goes, the less space you have to get to the important stuff (that is, selling yourself as the best applicant).

Concluding

There are many ways you can end your essay, but personally, I think the best way is to end strong with conviction. I think some applicants go the route of trying to make a fancy, stylish ending the way they develop the introduction, and I personally believe that’s the wrong way to go about it.

Like we’ve discussed throughout this series, our goal is to convince the reader that we are someone they want to help be physicians. In order to convince them with that strong of a feeling, it only makes sense that we need to encourage ideas of strength and conviction in the very last words they read. Your essay should end the same way you would end an argument in a debate – loud, strong, and clear. I remember all those times I would end my opening speech in a debate in a soft spoken, volume decreasing manner, and I kept being told this was a leak. In my opinion, the same goes for concluding your essays.

This is why I prefer an ending that is clear and blunt, that essentially sums up your angle for the essay.

Good luck!

I think I have covered most of the important aspects of writing this essay. I hope you enjoyed this series, and if you have any more questions or comments, I’d be happy to hear them.

All the best!

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  1. Mastering the University of Toronto Medical School Essay – Part 3: Why Medicine and How Did You Prepare - MedHopeful.com - September 15, 2013

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